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I am a 35-year-old woman who, unlike many of the other women sharing their stories, is not a cancer survivor. I am a previvor. At the age of 33, I was diagnosed as having a genetic mutation in the BRCA2 gene which increases my lifetime risk of breast cancer by up to 85 per cent.

Within days of this diagnosis, I knew what I had to do. Knowledge is power and with that, I made the decision to have a prophylactic mastectomy or proactively remove both of my breasts. This decision, as it turns out, would be the easiest part of the whole process.

I was young and healthy and I knew that I wanted to have the best possible result although the priority was to reduce my risk of developing the disease. So I started doing some research to educate myself on my options for reconstruction. I soon found that surgical options were limited in my home province. Upset and feeling as though maybe I should just settle for the only reconstruction option available to me, I just couldn’t imagine removing two healthy breasts and not having the benefit of working with a specialized surgeon who could make me look as close to normal as possible, so, I continued my research which led me to Dr. Blair Mehling.

Dr. Mehling is a micro-surgeon specializing in breast reconstruction in Edmonton. He and a colleague of his Dr.Dabbs, a general surgeon, often performed these surgeries as a team with amazing results. I immediately picked up the phone to schedule appointments with them both.

I was able to see Dr. Dabbs within six weeks, but I was told that Dr. Mehling had a wait list of eight months to a year for a consultation. As disappointed as I was, his specialty was breast reconstruction which I needed, so I patiently waited for my appointment to see him.

During that initial consultation he asked me one simple question that I will never forget, “On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being perfect how do you want to look post surgery?” I responded, “I want to look like a 10”.

It took almost one year from the date of that consultation until the day that I had surgery and that took a great deal of patience, not to mention managing the anxiety of thinking that I may get cancer in the meantime.

My surgery took 5½ hours at the Misericordia Hospital in Edmonton. During this surgery, I was fitted with expanders, which required “fills” (saline to fill my expanders and stretch my skin and muscle) every other week which meant numerous trips back to Edmonton.

This was followed by an exchange surgery where my expanders were swapped for permanent implants. Once I had healed from that surgery, I returned to see Dr. Mehling for my nipple reconstruction and tattooing. Overall, the process took a year and a half, resulting in over a dozen trips at my cost back and forth from Edmonton.

I will tell you that I am beyond thrilled with my results. But I will also tell you that this journey was a difficult one: from having to research who would do my surgery rather than accessing physicians in my home province, to the waiting game, to finally incurring the cost of travel for treatment.

I will sum it up by saying that we do have talented, specialized doctors who perform reconstruction right here in Canada. But there are not enough of them.

We deserve to look in the mirror and see courage and beauty in our scars, not turn away from the mirror.

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Kerrie: I proactively had both breasts removed. That was the easiest part

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